"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love." Bryant Gumbel

How’s it gonna be?

First of all, that was the best title I could come up with.

What is going on? I feel like there should be some loyalty to a team. If you have a dream that you can make it to the World Series, you should be willing to take a team all the way. It’s the personal responsibility of every player to do what they can to promote the potential greatness that a team can achieve. YOU could be part of something bigger. This almost sounds like some army recruitment thing, but it’s not. No, this is about the team that I know better than anything else in my life and the team that I love.

Let me begin by saying, it’s come to my attention that in my life I really have nothing useful to talk about. I’m incredibly awkward during phone conversations and the only conversations I can have with people are, “so… do you like… stuff?” There’s only one thing in this life that I do know, and that’s baseball. Get me started on baseball, I could talk for hours. Even in a drunken state, I could talk about the Red Sox or the Rockies or why Tim Lincecum’s pitching is so freakishly awesome. Baseball is the only subject that I care about. It’s what I want my career to be, a baseball sports psychologist. This is what I talk about. That’s why I started a blog specifically for baseball. I can be wrong, but it’s where I get to deconstruct any thoughts that I have.

Now, what I would really like to deconstruct my thoughts about. Matt Holliday and Garrett Atkins. We’re going to lose both, aren’t we? Matt Holliday wants a club that can get him to the World Series, he wants a club that at least shows a chance of becoming something great. Think back, back to when you saw that throw to Todd Helton. hink back to the feeling you had when Matt Holliday scored that run, what told them they were going to the World Series. Think about the way it made you feel. Amazing, right? I get goose bumps everytime I see that moment. That commercial where Holliday eats that donut thing and then at the end, they say “Holliday is in! The Rockies are headed to the World Series.” That sheer moment of utter ecstatsy in that team. Yes, the point of playing is to make it to the World Series, but should it come easy?

I’ve been working my tail off trying to get contacts for the Rockies to try and see what I can do about sports psychology. Let me tell you, it’s not coming easy by any means. After the 1980 US Olympic hockey team beat the Russians, there was pure rejoicing on their face. The Russians would later say that it was almost as if they forgot what winning was like. They didn’t have the heart that the Americans did and when they won, the joy wasn’t reflected in them as it was in the Americans.

Everybody wants to win. There’s no doubt about that. But wouldn’t it mean more to bring a team that has so little to something great? The Rockies aren’t a big club. They can’t pick up the big names and that makes it difficult to recruit talent. Everybody comes at a price. But there should be a drive to become something great, regardless of how much you’re making.

I have incredible respect for Matt Holliday. The man is completely phenomenal in every aspect of the game. I know it’s totally the chick thing to say “he has the nicest butt I have ever seen,” but that… really has nothing to do with what I’m trying to say. Apparently the alcohol is affecting my writing skills. Matt Holliday was a part of something great. Something completely miraculous. You may not always be the team that makes it to the _LCS or even the World Series, but shouldn’t the feeling of being something so astounding, so fantastic, so incredibly out of this world make you want to stay? This goes for Garrett Atkins too. Greatness is never achieved through easy means. You have to work hard to get exactly what you want most in life. I definitely need to take my own advice. That’s not the point though.

There’s nothing wrong with testing the waters of free agency. The hope though, is that some part wants to stay loyal to a team where everyone recognizes you. Matt Holliday is good enough to get with any team he wants, same with Atkins. The point of this was to understand that something so small could turn into something so great. That the effort, the drive, the motivation that one person puts in can drive a team to want to be better, to want to be more, to want it bad enough to do whatever it takes to get it (including hiring an awesome sports psychologist ;-) ).

So, since it seems loyalty to a team is lacking, and people want more than the feeling of achieving something so great by something so small, the question is, how’s it gonna be?

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